


Aengus

by starshinedown



Series: Aengus [1]
Category: Twilight - Meyer
Genre: Alternate Universe - All Human, F/M, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-17
Updated: 2010-03-17
Packaged: 2017-10-08 01:50:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starshinedown/pseuds/starshinedown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bella, a successful novelist, travels to Ireland for a working vacation. What she finds there puts her past into perspective, and irrevocably changes her future. This is wholly AU. No vampires in sight, though Edward IS a mythological creature. Originally written for Jayeliwood's Sexy Edward Contest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aengus

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the Dream of Óengus, which you can find at http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/oengus.html. Brief summary:
> 
> "Óengus dreams of a young girl for a year, but is unable to find out who she is and falls into a wasting sickness. His mother Boann goes in search and doesn't find her; the Dagda has Bodb go and find the girl, who is found at Loch Bel Dracon, chained to fifty other girls, all of which change shape into birds. The Dagda asks for Ailill and Medb's help, but is told to meet with Ethal, the local sidhe king and father of the girl, who is called Cáer Ibormeith. Eventually, Óengus is able to meet with the girl on Samhain; she only agrees to be with him if she's allowed to return to the lake. They turn into birds and sing the people to sleep, and Caer remained with Oengus after this." Summary from http://www.maryjones.us/jce/oengus.html
> 
> I may have abused the legend a little...it's all in the name of Bella and Edward nookie, ok?

 

 

**Aengus** _  
_

_Edward isn't _real_, Bella. When will you understand that? _Real. He was more real than the idiot boys in her class. He was definitely better than the boys in her class. She knew she was too old for this—Em had told her many, many years ago that big kids didn't have imaginary friends. Alice, her cousin, confidant, and partner in crime practically since birth, had long since stopped believing in her own imaginary friend. But even now, in eighth grade, Edward kept her company as she walked home from school, humming cheerful tunes in the recesses of her mind and kissing the inevitable scrapes and bruises she accumulated as her clumsiness kicked in. What “real” boy saw her at her absolute worst and still came back day after day? None of them held a candle to her Edward...certainly not Tyler “won't you come to the Spring Dance with me?” Crowley. Even if she _was_ the only person who could see or hear Edward.

_***_

“Do you have an imaginary friend, Em?”

He looked down at her, his five extra years giving him a much greater height. “Not anymore twerp. I'm too old for that.” He ruffled her hair. “You still have Edward, right?”

She nodded.

“He'll probably be around until you make friends in Kindergarten this year. That's when I started to stop seeing my pretend friends so much. That and you were screaming in the nursery. You probably scared them away!” He cracked up at his joke, and when she didn't respond, he tickled her until she laughed so hard she cried.

It didn't help. She was terrified of going to school now. Kindergarten had looked like to so much fun! Em liked school and the boys he'd made friends with, and Bella had been dying to ride the bus to school with him. And now that school was a week away she was appalled. Would Edward leave her? Could she make it through something as scary and exciting as Kindergarten without him?

***

When she grew older, other children mocked her for still having an imaginary friend—and were outright vicious later in childhood when she slipped up and mentioned him at a time when her playmates and siblings had long since forgotten their own imaginary playmates. When she was ten, she'd asked Emmett if she could bring Edward (named after _Edward Scissorhands_) camping with the family the next weekend. Emmett had given her a serious big-brother lecture on how big girls didn't have imaginary friends, and how she needed real friends. It'd stunned her. Didn't he think Edward was real? Hadn't Edward kissed away her bruises and pains and little hurts over the years? No. Emmett was adamant. _It's embarrassing, Bells. Don't you know that your friends have all outgrown that stuff? I worry about you. You need friends besides me and Alice. Real friends. Kids who aren't family. Edward isn't _real_, Bella. When will you understand that? _That night, heartbroken, she cried herself to sleep. She'd never mentioned Edward to anyone else. He became hers and hers alone, though he appeared less frequently as she grew older and she became more firmly rooted in everyday life, the life Emmett had called real. She'd never really liked it.

***

She went on a few dates  in high school. One of the downsides of growing up in a small town was that you knew everyone—all of their history, who they'd kissed on the playground in grade school, who the rumor mill said they'd last dated, and how everyone was (or wasn't) related to everyone else. It was claustrophobic.

And even though she'd let Mike Newton kiss her under the bleachers at the homecoming game freshman year, and let Jasper Hale (who later married her cousin, Alice) feel her up on the bus on the way home from a school trip to Vancouver, she didn't feel much of anything for them, aside from curiosity. She border-lined on indifference.

She gave up her virginity in college to a boy she was passably affectionate for. That, too, was mostly curiosity—she wanted to know what the Big. Deal. was about sex. Eventually, she realized it was a nice distraction, sometimes fun. But never earth shattering or addicting.

Except in her dreams, when she was with Edward. Her dreams were always so much better than sex in real life.

She was still alone.

***

 

The sixth novel was the first one she thought good enough to submit to a literary agent. She'd heard somewhere that your first five novels were just practice, and she agreed. It was true for her—it wasn't until her sixth that she really felt she'd mastered the art of spinning a quality tale. Her agent agreed that it was good and within a year she and her agent were haggling over a contract with a huge publisher. Eight months after contract negotiations started, she was signed and she was on her way.

She never expected to be so fantastically successful. It was scary. She was only 25, and her age made her a media darling. She had a battery of interviews and appearances. The book tours were intimidating, but fun. Women adored her main character, of course named Edward. This she understood; he was, after all, based on _her_ Edward.

Her next novel came easily. The outline flowed out of her, and she soon had the beginning and ending written in detail, with the main plot points of the middle mapped out for detail when she came to them. On her 28th birthday, it was released and she was floored when it became the number one bestseller. It stayed there. And stayed there. Alice bought the most expensive hoity-toity wine she could afford, and the two of them shared the bottle in celebration. Edward, in her dreams that year, rewarded her in ways that no mere mortal man could dream of. For a time, just thinking of one of those dreams made her wet and longing for a physical release that matched the intensity of the dreams.

 

Of course no actual man could come close. Sex, while pleasant, was always...lacking.

 

She still didn't connect to people outside of family. She appreciated her fans. She respected and had a certain affection for her editor. Occasionally, she entertained lovers. But there was no real connection. She was alone in the crowd. She always had been, except for the gorgeous protector of her dreams, whom only she could see.

***

“Rose?”

She waited for the other woman to respond. Rose was her editor (and newly minted sister-in-law) and champion at the publisher, and Bella knew she needed to talk to her about her need for a vacation-slash-research trip. For a small place somewhere not here; preferably someplace near where her family came from in Ireland. She wanted to get close to her father's roots, see the places her great-grandmother had described to her father, who had then told her.

She wanted to go to County Meath. On the eastern side of Ireland, north up the coast from Dublin. Generations of her family had lived there before emigrating to the United States. For the past several years, she'd felt the call to go there as though there were a string tied directly to her heart, tugging. Now she could afford the trip, and she could use it as research for her new novel. She wanted her next novel to be set abroad, and she wanted to get away from the insanity here at home.

“Sorry Bella! I didn't mean to take so long. What's on your mind?” Rose's voice was all concern and apology over the phone.

“I'm going to Ireland. The book tour is finally over, and I need a break away from everything here in the States. I'm hiding. And doing research for the next book.”

 

“Bella, if you need a break, you need a break. You don't have to do research, or even work for a month or so. I'm surprised you're sane after the tour you were on.”

“Just...don't tell anyone where I'm going, ok Rose? I don't want to do phone or e-mail interviews. No business travel. Just me and my suitcase, my notebooks and laptop.” _And a bronze-haired knight in shining armor in my head._

“How long, Bella?”

“Six months.”

She heard a faint choking noise from the other end of the phone. “Will you be doing research and writing for most of those six months? The goal was a novel on the shelf every 18 months...which means you can't have half a year off -”

“Don't worry Rose. I couldn't take six months off of writing if I wanted to. The vacation part will be the change in scenery and the escape from family and press and mundane life here. The work will get done.”

***

Upon arriving at the small lovely bungalow that would be her home for six months in the small town of Drogheda, she tossed her bags on the big quilt-covered bed, shoved her notebook, camera, pens, and a few other essentials into her messenger bag, and made her way over to Newgrange, five miles west. She was drawn to it and knew she wouldn't sleep until she saw the ancient earthen mound and white stone wall.

_Brú na Bóinne._ Legend said the Tuatha Dé Danann created this place as a burial chamber for Dagda Mór and his three sons. Legend also said this was the home of Aengus, the one son of Dagda that Bella was interested in. In her research for the novel, she'd immersed herself in the legends of the Tuatha Dé Danann and in the exploits of Dagda Mór and of his children. Aengus's story captured her. After reading of his love for Cáer Ibormeith and the test he'd had to pass to marry her, Bella decided to feature the two in her novel—to bring them into modern Ireland somehow.

She wrote in her notebook frantically, the whole story—their personalities, wants, quirks, fears, weaknesses, everything—formed in her mind as soon as her eyes took in the ancient site. She couldn't make her hand move fast enough to get it down on paper. It was like trying to capture a dream in print. Impossible to do it justice, but a worthy effort anyway.

Idly, she wondered if this is what Zeus had felt like when he'd conceived Athena and created her whole out of his mind. When she saw the carved triple spiral in the central chamber of _Brú na Bóinne_, she felt the most powerful sense of déjà vu she'd ever experienced. She sunk to her knees, brought there by a foreign pain and an unimaginable sense of loss. For the first time in many years, she found herself looking around for _him_—she felt expectant, as she had as a child, when he was around every corner and always there to keep her company—and actually expected to see his reddish brown, almost bronze hair there in the chamber with her.

 

So she sat here, on her blanket near a bend of the Boyne River, within sight of the mound and wall that formed Newgrange, writing as fast as possible, physically as removed from others as she emotionally felt herself to be. Though there were always tourists at Newgrange, Bella felt as though this place was hers and hers only, to share with _him._ Her pen scratched across the paper, and for the first time, she wrote down a detailed description of the man she'd known all her life. Though her previous male leads had been based on Edward, she'd been too selfish to make their physical descriptions like him. She hadn't wanted to share her dream man with the masses. Those men had been blond. Not her Edward. Her Edward had bronze hair. Luminous green eyes the exact shade of the field just to her right. Fine features that would make a bard weep with joy. Strong arms and hands, perfect slender fingers. Lean sinewy muscles that rippled as he moved. _He_ would be Aengus, the god of love who'd dreamed of a woman who then took him over a year to find. 

Edward was there, as always, of course, in the recesses of her mind. But writing out his features and expressions made him almost tangible, something more than the resident of her imagination and memory.  She almost thought he predated memory. Her first memories were not of her parents, or her siblings, or of any member of her family—they were of _him_. He knelt beside her in this first memory, cupping her tear-streaked face tenderly as she cried over a bee sting. That action of love and comfort dried her tears and brought a smile to her face. In her childhood, he'd always brought a smile to her face.

***

When she moved to the little town of Drogheda for her vacation-slash-research trip, her dreams had become much more vivid. She woke each morning feeling as though she had traveled to different times and different lives. She'd almost say that the dreams were reenactments of experiences gone by in this place. Maybe she was reliving the experiences of her ancestors. Maybe she just wanted the dreams to mean more. But they were so amazingly real, the emotions she felt while in them so vivid, that she needed to believe there was more than simple want. Her dreams had two common themes to them: Edward, and Newgrange. Edward was in each scenario, each life. And they were always at or near Newgrange.

Her dream last night had left her waking with a racing pulse, a burning need in the depths of her abdomen, and boxers that were soaked completely through. She'd woken up actually expecting to see his particular bronze hair between her legs, and was disappointed to find that the erotic pressure against her clit during her dream was not Edward, but her own hand. Still pleasant, but not exactly what she wanted.

Oh, God. The man she wanted didn't even exist. She was a month from her thirtieth birthday, and she'd never had a long term relationship (_besides Edward_). Had she completely screwed herself by holding on to him as an adult?

***

Bella paused in her writing. She'd been at Newgrange and Drogheda for nearly her allotted six months. This was her seventh notebook for the manuscript of the novel. When she got home she'd have to sit down at the computer and do copious amounts of editing. The notebooks were a testament to her fascination with Newgrange, Aengus/Edward, Cáer, and Ireland, but this was not a coherent story yet. She rubbed her temples. The meat of it was there, but she was missing something. Something in the story, and if she admitted it (she could when she was isolated like this), something in herself. The elaborate fantasies she built in her head of fairy-tale castles in the sky had sustained her into her teen years, but had crumbled as her twenties passed her by with no Great Love to call her own. She'd had brief romances, flings, one-night stands, but nothing fulfilling. Nothing like the bond her parents enjoyed, or the marriages her cousin and brother managed. She was always separate and alone in the crowd of loved ones.

Where was her Aengus? He'd searched for over a year to find the woman he'd seen in a dream. He'd been able to pick her out when she'd been turned into a swan, even while she'd been one swan among many. He'd turned into a swan for her and they'd flown off together in true love. Did she have such a man for her out there? Was she fated to only have her Edward? Why did he only exist in her head?

 

_***_

This morning's dream had been the most erotic of her life. She didn't just wake up needing her vibrator, horny and unsatisfied. This morning, she woke up having experienced and incredibly powerful orgasm. Her eyes had flown open with her back arched off the bed, a moan erupting from her throat, and her hands violently twisting the sheets on either side of her hips. The room was empty, but she was positive that she'd only _just_ missed someone. There was a faint stirring of the air around her bedroom's patio doors (open, though she had most definitely closed them the night before). The skin on the inside her thighs had the memory of another body. Her neck tingled where lips had been.

She resisted the urge to leap out of bed to see if she could spot the man who must have just left her bungalow. She really didn't want to know. She felt great. That was enough. And she could pretend it was her Edward.

Well, she had some more material for the smutty parts of her novel now.

***

 

She gasped as the swans flew in. There were dozens of them landing in the field and the section of The Boyne River near her. She knew the Whooper Swans wintered in Newgrange, but this was the first she'd seen them for herself. Her breath caught in her throat as several of them settled down and began preening and cleaning themselves less than ten feet in front of her.

Not for the first time, Bella gave a small “hmph” at the irony of her last name, Swan. With these graceful creatures so close, it was even more painfully obvious to her that she didn't live up to that grace and beauty. One in particular caught her eye. He—she just knew it was a he—was probably the largest swan she'd seen. She didn't know they could even get that big. His feathers reflected the weak winter sun just a little more brightly than his companions, his neck was just a little more graceful than theirs.

“Oh,” she breathed. “If the story were flip-flopped and it was the maiden who had to pick the dashing hero out of the crowd of swans, she—I—would pick you. You're him. You're Edward, my own Aengus.” A sad expression settled on her face. This was it. She was officially a nutter, as the locals might call her. She was talking to large, pretty birds. She was comparing said large, pretty birds, well, one large pretty bird, to a myth and an imaginary companion.

The book was getting to her.

Life was getting to her.

Emmett had been right all those years ago. She did need real friends.

If she'd been in the States, last night she would have been handing out candy to costumed children in the neighborhood for Halloween. This was the first year she hadn't participated in her favorite holiday. It seemed so silly here, in sight of the passage-tomb of Newgrange. November was starting off cold. Despite the misty cold weather she still preferred writing outside to writing from the confines of her little bungalow. She felt more connected, more inspired outside. Twice as productive outside than in, she simply layered her clothing—wool and stout cotton under more modern cold-weather coats and boots—and toughed it out. The writing she was getting done was well worth the discomfort.

 

She hitched her coat and blanket tighter around her shoulders and leaned against the rock she'd taken to using as a prop. In spite of her rationalizations, she continued to watch the large swan as he dived into the waters, ruffled his feathers, and generally impressed the female population—both avian and human. It was getting on in the day, and she'd need to go in soon. The shorter winter days meant colder temperatures and she couldn't stay out here the way she wanted to. She was so tired, though. She leaned her head against the rock and day dreamed about the swan who was Edward/Aengus, about Aengus/Edward who was also the beautiful swan. And at some point daydreams became true dreams and she fell asleep.

She woke with a start and choked back a scream when she saw the large swan—Edward/Aengus—two feet from her and staring at her intently. It was unnerving. Did swans even stare? “What are you looking at?” she asked crankily. He cocked his head to the side and continued to stare.

Not normal.

Was she still asleep?

She pinched herself and jumped at the sensation. Yes. Awake. But possibly in a weird _Twilight Zone_ episode where huge, gorgeous swans ,who make novelists think of imaginary friends and mythical gods, stare at sleeping women.

Should she feed him? Is that why he was looking at her so intently? She fumbled for her messenger bag and pulled out the squashed sandwich the friendly Colleen, the butcher's wife, had made her. She ripped off a piece of the bread and shredded it into smaller pieces, which she started to toss toward the swan. He scooped up each piece with his bill and as the offering petered out, he settled down on the bank of the river, still staring at her.

She was genuinely worried now. Why would a bird, a very large, majestic, seemingly intelligent, gorgeous swan, stare at her so? She wondered briefly if she could work this into her novel. She snorted at the idea. Right. Because that would work. It was bad enough she was dragging two lovers born in Celtic mythology into the modern day. There would be no way a reader would buy into the idea that Aengus was the one who was a swan this time around and Cáer the person who had to pick him out of the flock of swans as a test of their immortal love. Even worse to make Cáer not remember who she was, not remember that she was being tested at all.

She needed sleep.

Bella gathered up her belongings and folded the blanket. Her swan—hell, she might as well just name him Edward Aengus Swan, since he felt like _hers_ anyway, and he was already Edward/Aengus in her head—Edward the swan made a chuffing noise and ruffled up his feathers as she rose to leave. Childishly, she stuck her tongue out at him. “Don't get all uppity, Edward Aengus! I'll be back tomorrow. Go back to impressing all the lonely girl swans on the river.”

At this, he stood up and spread his wings to their full length before shaking himself and shuffled to the water's edge.

Yes, sleep would be a good thing. Maybe she'd strike up a conversation with Colleen. Talk to someone who was flesh and blood and the salt of the earth. Someone who wasn't a giant swan or a figure who only existed in her mind.

 

***

When she went to bed, she didn't lock the patio doors.

This dream set new standards for realistic. Edward's lips caressed her skin. He started by gently pressing his perfect lips to her closed eyes, then, with the faintest pressure, delicately brushed his lips across her nose, along her cheekbones and jaw. His breath—a faint whiff of heaven—settled gently over her nose and mouth, triggering a deep inhale from her. She felt that divine scent as it traveled through her nose and down her throat into the warm ball of pressure that was already forming low in her belly.

She couldn't quite seem to to move. Her eyes were locked shut against her will. Her senses were on fire, though. Where Edward's skin touched hers, magma flows started. The sound of his breath moving in and out of his lungs created a melody for her ears. She could taste his breath a little. She felt Edward's weight shift from next to her to hovering over her, his weight never settling on her body as he propped himself up on his knees on either side of her and on his forearms, his hands gently cradling her head. She tried to open her eyes to see him, but they stayed stubbornly closed. What was wrong with her?

He lowered his head down to hers, his lips feathering kisses on her cheek until he reached her ear. “Open your eyes, _a ghr__á_, my love. You chose correctly.” He took her earlobe between his lips and gave a slight nip before raising his head back up to stare down into her face.

Her eyelids actually obeyed her this time. 'Finally,' she thought. She dragged her reluctant brown eyes open and came face to face with her own personal god. Green eyes—they really were the exact shade of green that field had been—were inches from her own, twinkling at her. Something she hadn't noticed in all those years of dreams and imaginings was that his eyes were...active. Not static irises that normal people have, but moving liquid green.

For a couple of seconds, her heart stopped.

His smile restarted it, faster than ever.

That smile. _Her_ smile.

He lowered his head so that they were nose-to-nose. “Do you remember, my heart? You chose correctly, understood who I was even in another form. But do you remember?”

The swirling depths of his eyes seemed to still, becoming nearly motionless liquid as he waited for her answer.

She willed her arms to obey her, and to her surprise, they did. She brought her hands up to learn his face. She lightly dragged her finger tips along his eyebrows, over the perfect angles and planes of his face, along his jawline to his lips. It was a face she knew so well.

As she traced her finger tips over his cheekbones, something long buried within her stirred. Flashes of memory that were most definitely NOT hers. At least, not Bella's. _Edward in much different clothing, in a different time, much taller than her, calling to her in triumph and then...morphing into a magnificent swan._

_ The two of them, flying off together as swans. The two of them, singing as they flew so that all who heard them slept for three days._

_ The two of them, occasionally integrating themselves into the families of this area to live as mortals for a time._

_ Edward—or rather, Aengus—cursing his brother as he caused the beautiful Cáer to be born as a mortal into a family that was far, far from their home in Ireland. Distance from their home weakened their link somehow, and Aengus could not follow physically as he always had before. He could only visit her as Edward._

She paused her caresses of his face, and placed her palms against his cheeks, holding his head firmly between her hands. She looked into the nearly-still pools of green and smiled.

“I remember,” she whispered.

He made a sort of crowing noise as his face transformed into something of unearthly beauty. His lips crashed down into hers, urgent, joyful, and fierce. He let his weight settle on her more firmly as he squeezed her tightly with arms and legs.

Bella freed her arms enough to wrap them around his torso. She wanted her entire body pressed against the length of him. She needed to feel the lean muscles of his body against her softer chest and stomach, needed to feel his erection as it pushed against its restraining clothes and into her thigh. Needed to hear their hearts thudding against their ribcages in time with one another.

She needed him. All of him. His lips, his skin, his hair, his sweet breath, his warm hands, his strong arms, his muscles rippling under her fingertips. Everything that had been denied her as an adult, everything she'd been looking for whenever she took a lover. She needed to really, finally, _breathe._

Their lips moved together, their mouths open to one another, their tongues tasting each other's mouths and lips. The feeling of her lips on his was nothing like any other kiss; this was perfection. It made her soul sing. This was love and devotion and heart in a simple movement. He pulled her bottom lip into his mouth and sucked on it lightly. She felt him smile against her skin as she moaned. He moved his lips down to her jaw, which he followed with open kisses and little nips back to her ear.

“I've waited so long to kiss you again, my heart,” he whispered. He continued his caressing kisses, spending some time at the sweet spot just behind and below her ear, causing her to suck in an electrified breath and eliciting a whole-body shiver that raised the hair on her arms. She felt her nipples, already firm, tighten almost painfully.

She was no longer content to tightly hold him to her as he kissed his way across her face and neck. Suddenly she was running her hands all over his body; any place she could reach, she touched. The corded muscles of his biceps and triceps, his shoulders, his neck, tugging that luxurious red-brown hair,  the hard planes of his upper back, the lean muscles along his sides, the curve his lower back, his perfect round ass, his hips, and back up again. She arched her body against his as much as she could with his weight on her.

She _needed_ more.

She needed _more._

She sank her hands into his hair and forced his face to her own so she could crush her lips to his. He returned the kiss with equal force, pressing her head into the pillow behind it. Satisfied that he was at her level of intensity, she reached behind him and grabbed his very firm, muscled ass and pulled him into her with as much strength as she had. She was rewarded by feeling his erection grind against her tightly wound bundle of nerves. A low, almost guttural, moan escaped her lips only to be swallowed by Edward's mouth.

She pushed his face back slightly. “Too many clothes,” she panted, as she continued to push against him.

He allowed himself to be moved, and she rolled them over so that he was on his back and she was straddling his hips, attacking his shirt. She couldn't move fast enough. She wanted it off. He was gracious enough to help her, and he arched his back and lifted his arms as she pulled the shirt up over his head and threw it off to the side.

The magnificent sight before her made her pause. He was...heavenly. He was a god. She giggled softly to herself. Literally a god.

She had a god in her bed, in between her legs, and he was all hers.  She bent forward, roughly kissing his neck, occasionally nipping and biting it as she trailed to the junction of his neck and shoulder, where she sucked at the skin, pulling it into her mouth and not-so-gently biting it.

His hands, which had been rubbing small circles on her hips now firmly cupped her ass and pulled her forcefully into him. Their kisses grew intense again, and he dragged his hands heavily up her back, taking her sleep shirt with them. She sat up and helped him take her shirt off, leaving her only in her gray boy shorts.

“Always so beautiful,” he breathed. He gripped her waist, massaging her skin as he pulled her down to him so that their chests were touching.

“Always yours,” she whispered against his lips.

He tightened his grip on her and pulled her hips down to his, grinding their pelvises together. As they set their rhythm, she began kissing his collarbone and worrying the skin of his shoulders and pecs with her lips and teeth. She crawled backwards, dragging her breasts, lips, and hair down his torso, paying special attention to his nipples and loving the indentations between his abdominal muscles.

He groaned underneath her and dragged his fingers up her ribcage. She came to the waistband of his pants and paused to glance up at him before she took away this last barrier to him. What she saw in his eyes stopped her mid-movement. His eyes, once a swirling green the color of a Irish field, were now tornadoes of the deepest emerald. They were incredibly beautiful, a maelstrom sucking her in, mesmerizing her. He reached up to her face, cupping her cheeks with his hands in a gentle movement that belied the feverish way they'd been kissing and groping each other moments before.

“I love you, my heart,” he murmured, “as Cáer Ibormeith, as Bella Swan, as any other incarnation. You are, truly, the woman of my dreams. I am for you, as you are for me.” His thumb traced her eyebrows and the heat of his hands warmed her already flushed cheeks.

She remembered so clearly seeing him that day, on Samhain, swimming in the lake with the other women-turned-swans. She remembered this whirling green eyes that latched onto her and did not let go. She remembered the need she had then to be with him and reflected that it had nothing, nothing on the need she had for him now. The warm tension that had been building in her belly was now a raging, encompassing heat. Niceties and foreplay could come later. What she wanted now was _him_. Inside her, joined with her, making them one.

“I want to remember and re-experience everything with you, Edward. Aengus. However I may call you, you are my heart and my soul. No more foreplay. I want to join with you and reawaken this body to the joy it was made for.” She turned her face to kiss the inside of his palm, as she had been inclined to do as “their” gesture in lives past.

Before she knew it, she was under him and he was worshiping her body with his lips, working his way down her stomach as he slid her boy shorts down her legs. When they reached her ankles, she kicked them off. He settled between her legs and placed an warm kiss on her now very sensitive, very eager, sex. The moan that rolled out from her throat was primal, and he echoed it back to her, the vibrations of his moan against her lips made her buck her hips against his mouth. He began to stroke her with his tongue, taking in the moisture that coated her. He eased his finger inside her and slowly pumped it in and out of her.

“More,” she moaned, “I need mooore.” Her words straggled off as she lost her breath with a sharp pleased gasp when he slipped two more fingers inside of her, increasing the friction and the moisture between her legs. His tongue never stopped its ministrations. Between his mouth and his fingers, she was in heaven. But at this moment, it wasn't what she wanted. She wanted him inside of her. And she wanted it now.

She reached down and secured her hands in his beautiful hair and tugged him up to catch him in a kiss and to taste herself on him. Her body's juices were never something that interested her before, but now, on him, mingling with his own unique smell and taste, the precious liquid was a huge turn on.

“I want you in me, now. I can't wait any longer. Please.” She pushed his head back slightly to look in his eyes as she said this. He nodded once, and in an instant all his clothes were off of him and she had an unobstructed view of him for the first time in this life. To say he was godly would be both an understatement and a literal statement of fact. But her Edward, her Aengus, was so very much more. He was walking perfection, and he was pushing her legs apart to place himself between them, he was coating the tip of his penis in her juices, he was pushing into her.

He paused, allowing her body to adjust. When she was comfortable, she tucked her ankles behind him and tilted her hips to give him better access. He filled her up, sated the want. Though they moved together and the delicious friction made her almost insane with the heat and the sensation, the universe,  somehow, also stopped moving. They were in their own space, just them and their bodies and their sweat and their moans and grunts of pleasure, skin slapping skin as they came together over and over—a music unrivaled by anything she'd heart.  Her arms were wrapped around him, hugging him closer to her, reveling in the feeling of her whole body against his, rubbing against him as they moved in this most ancient and sacred of dances.

He separated their bodies enough to reach between them and rub against her bundle of nerves; he must know how close she was to climaxing. His hand, combined with their thrusts, pushed her over the edge. The heat flowed from her lower abdomen through her body, down her arms and legs, exploding through her fingers and toes. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she thought for a second she might black out from sheer bliss. She realized that she was chanting his name, over and over, quietly, in time with his thrusts, which grew longer, deeper, and more final as he came closer to his own orgasm.

His longer strokes triggered something within her, and she felt a second wave of pleasure roll over her and this time when she screamed his name and arched her back, he came with her.

 

***

 

Later, they were in post-coital bliss. Edward examined this body of hers, asking her about every scar and wrinkle and dimple as though he had not been in her head for the past thirty years. They compared hand sizes, forearm length, foot sizes, muscle tone, freckles, everything about their bodies that they could explore like curious children, they explored. Giggling, she gave the bottom of his foot a kiss, just as she normally kissed the palm of his hand. And she realized with a start that even now—with his perfectly sculpted foot against her cheek—that they meshed together. Every part of Edward fit every part of Bella.

She was complete. Whole. Unfractured, lacking in nothing. For the first time in thirty years she felt like she could truly breathe. The man from her dreams was cradling her head in his hands. The man who had watched over her in dreamland for as long as she had memory, fit comfortably between her legs as though they were made to be in that very position. The man who was her childhood imaginary friend was staring down at her with liquid green eyes that were all but glowing. He was who she was looking for whenever she accepted a date from a good-looking redhead in college. He was who she was trying to create when she wrote the male leads in her novels. He was the puzzle piece that was made just for her. He was everything.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight or the Twilight characters. They belong to Stephanie Meyer and probably Little, Brown.


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